Super Selfishness

As Scottsdale city councilman Bob Littlefield often says, “You couldn’t make this stuff up.”

In a KTAR report this morning, Michael Bidwell (president of the Arizona Cardinals team) is quoted as saying the City of Glendale is “acting very selfishly” in not guaranteeing prices for its hotel room block.

I assume that involves some sort of monetary contribution from the City Glendale, like the nearly $650,000 in taxpayer-funded subsidy contributed to the 2015 Super Bowl host committee by Scottsdale Mayor Jim Lane, and city council incumbent candidates Dennis Robbins and Linda Milhaven.

A few choice Bidwell quotes from the KTAR piece:

“You look specifically at the hotels out there, they’re are just worried about their bottom line,” said Bidwill, who serves on the Super Bowl 2015 planning committee. “That’s not how great cities act. That’s not the way great leaders act. If people and cities want to be big time, they have to come together.

“We are, the Cardinals included, giving so that we get this. It’s a collective effort from the corporate world from the government side to the public sector side, so that we can continue to work hard to compete to be in these rotations.”

From an economic standpoint, Bidwill said hosting the Super Bowl could be worth up to $500 million and is a major boon when it comes to attracting both future tourism and major sporting events.

“We’re going to continue going after big games,” said Bidwill. “We’re a finalist for the Final Four. We’ve got the [College Football Playoff] Championship Game for 2016. We as a community and as a state will continue to do that, but if there is a city like Glendale that doesn’t want to participate, they are going to lose out.

“All the activities are going to go to the other cities that are participating. And in this instance, it’s going to be Phoenix and Scottsdale for the most part. And, they are great partners. The problem with Glendale all comes down to leadership and shortsightedness.”

Ignoring the widely-discredited ‘economic impact’ hype…

It’s interesting to me that businessman Bidwell laud’s the hoteliers’ business-like attention to the “bottom line,” yet he appears to be saying that’s not so important for city government. Funny, I’d think that’s one of the first components of “leadership.”